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The other morning, in a tiny rehearsal room on West 54th Street, an elderly gaggle of legendary dancers got together and formed a rickety pinwheel, which revolved slowly and steadily to a waltz only a Stephen Sondheim could have written.

Carmen De Lavallade was, by turns, choreographing and participating in this charming twirl. The Tiger Lily of yesteryear, diminutive Sondra Lee, was making all the right Jerome Robbins-trained moves. William Duell was bearing the same audience-winning grin which he has had since 1776 (the musical). And Frederic Franklin was showing grace that belied his 96 years.

This 50-minute made-for-television chamber musical aired just once — Nov. 16, 1966 — as part of the "ABC Stage 67" television series, but somehow, over the years, it has become the most-requested video in The Paley Center for Media's collection.

Anthony Perkins starred as a stressed-out poet who opts to hide from the hectic hurly-burly of real life — in a department store, where he has peace and quiet and every creature-comfort at his fingertips. Unfortunately, after hours, he discovers among the mannequins a secret society of hermits who had the same idea — first.

Led by Mrs. Monday (Dorothy Stickney) and Roscoe Potts (Larry Gates), they live in constant fear of discovery by the night watchman or that one of their number will bolt back to the real world. To prevent this, there are The Dark Men, enforcers at the Journey's End mortuary, who turn turncoats and burglars alike into mannequins — and turn "Evening Primrose" into a bargain-basement Brigadoon.

Fresh from "Sixteen Going On Seventeen" in the movie of "The Sound of Music," Charmian Carr was Mrs. Monday's 19-year-old handmaiden, who falls for new-arrival Perkins and plots an escape with him back to the real world. The story ends, less merrily than most musicals, pretty close to a "Twilight Zone" episode.

Sondheim always liked the show in this form. "What I wanted to do was find ways of using television," he has said, "write a musical that could not be done on stage."

Nevertheless, a stage version had a three-week run in London five years ago (it was one of Betsy Blair's last appearances), and the U.S. premiere, directed by Tony Walton, will occur (in a staged concert) Oct. 25 at the Gerald W. Lynch Theatre at John Jay College.

	Sean Palmer in rehearsal for the new concert.
	photo by Krissie Fullerton

Here, the store-crossed lovers are played by Sean Palmer from The Little Mermaid and Jessica Grové from A Little Night Music. Candice Bergen and John Cunningham lead the clandestine clan of elders; and John Windsor Cunningham (funnily enough, no relation) is the night watchman. The aforementioned dancing four contribute to the heirloom atmosphere of the piece, which James Goldman darkly adapted from a 13-page 1940 short story in John Collier's 1951 collection called "Fancies and Goodnights."

The day after the Manhattan concert, Oct. 26, Entertainment One and the Archive of American Television will release, for the first time on any format, an extras-laden black-and-white DVD of the telecast, digitally re-stored and re-mastered to exacting standards.

On DVD, the Paley Center's intrepid "detective"-in-residence, Jane Klain, conducts an audio interview with Carr, whose entire showbiz career consisted of two roles — yet both of them embraced the top tunesmiths of her day (Liesl in Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The Sound of Music," and Ella Hawkins in this Sondheim musical).

Her second career was interior decorating, and her clients included a huge "Evening Primrose" fan, Michael Jackson, who wanted his bedroom done up in mannequins.

The television show was helmed by veteran director Paul Bogart, who, 91 next month (Nov. 21), looks back on the whole experience with much-justified pride — and this, from a man who won his five Emmy Awards for nonmusicals ("The Defenders," "All in the Family," "The Golden Girls" and two "CBS Playhouse" presentations).

"I wouldn't change that experience for anything in the world," he beamed proudly over the phone recently from his home outside Chapel Hill, NC. "I'm proudest of letting the music happen. I just tried not to get in the way. Sondheim is no patsy, y'know. You can't put him in a slot. You take a song like 'I Remember [Sky],' with its beautiful, gentle tones, and then you contrast it with 'Take Me to the World,' which is a very old-fashioned duet of the old musical-theatre school in which the hero and the heroine sing about their future together and they soar higher and higher until they burst into the stratosphere. It's very Rudolf Friml."

With "I Remember," a song Sondheim supposedly wrote overnight, "I didn't want to watch him watching her," so Bogart dollied past Perkins to a closeup of Carr singing, removing all Jeanette MacDonald-Nelson Eddy allusions.